Anyone who has been left high and dry when their web host has shut shop knows what a pain it can be to find a new home for one’s site. Web hosts are dime a dozen, but it can be quite a task to sort the good ones from the fly-by-night operators. What should you look for? What does all those jargon mean? Well, let’s find out. A web host is the company that rents you space on a server where you can upload your website content so that it is accessible online. Unless you own your own web server, the chances are you are going to require a hosting service if you want people from around the world to visit your site.

Paid or free?

There are plenty of free web hosting services, like Google Sites and Tripod, which come with their own templates and site-creation tools. This is perfect for anyone keen to set up site easily and quickly. But remember, free hosting may be ad-supported or have other limitations, such as using your own domain name or design constraints. If you want to retain complete control over your site, its contents and design, a paid host is preferable. Paid, however, doesn’t mean you have to take on a second job. A basic hosting package for a small, static site could put you back by only Rs 500 or so (depending, of course, on your package, features or billing cycle).

Jargon busting

Once you make up your mind to invest in paid hosting, there are plenty of other questions to consider and the computerese can be mind-numbing. Here’s some help:

n For a personal website, you will be looking at shared hosting. This is cheaper than dedicated hosting, which is for people wanting to rent an entire server. Dedicated hosting will not be limited by storage and bandwidth, but will be more expensive.

n Storage is the amount of space you need for your website. A two-page static site will obviously require much less than one that has image galleries or even an ever-growing blog.

Bandwidth refers to the total data that can be transferred at a time. (It can also refer to the amount of data transferred.)

Uptime is the host’s estimation of how long the service or device will be available. A reliable host is supposed to provide an accurate estimation of uptime guarantee. Be aware that a 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee means your site could be down eight hours and 46 minutes in a year.

Linux or Windows? Linux-based hosting is usually cheaper since it is open source and the software used on these servers is also open source and/or free. However, if you have specific Windows-based requirements, you might want to go for that.

n The web hosting control panel is the interface with which you can interact with your hosting account and administer your site. CPanel is a well-known control panel, but there are plenty of others.

n Most hosts also provide a script library. For example, Fantastico, which automates the installation, offers many web packages, like blog software, shopping carts, content management and systems.

n Hosts also offer various combinations of databases, email and FTP accounts, subdomains, addon domains and parked domains. This depends on your requirements. An addon domain lets you host a different site at the same host, while a parked domain is a domain name that points to the same site as the original.

Tune in

Even armed with all the technical information, it can sometimes be notoriously difficult to pin down a reliable web host. Ask around for recommendations, web hosting forums help as well. Webhostingtalk.com, for instance, is a good place to hang out. Also, contact individual hosts with queries and gauge what their response time and service is like.

Remember that you need not necessarily look for a provider based in India. Though the prices in dollars might look alarming, you might get a more economical deal from overseas.zz

Payal Dhar is a freelance technology writer